What’s New

Ratings and Reviews

Constant Loading & Freezing Issues

What is causing the increasingly long load times? With the nation -and world’s - scene so rapidly changing, it’s incomprehensible that a major news outlet would allow its app to take a ... full minute ... or two ... and sometimes even close to three(!), to fully load. That, coupled with the constant delay in navigation responsiveness and freezing, has made CNN’s the most frustrating app I use. Having followed primarily CNN’s coverage of the news for many years, imagine how high the level of frustration must be to prompt consideration of deleting this app altogether so as not to continue the waste of storage space or my valuable time. So, am about to download another update, which one hope’s will address these issues by correcting or, at the very least, significantly improving the app’s performance.

Qweerty1
, 10/26/2019

Constantly opening links and ads

I’ve used this app for years but I’m deleting it over a recent dip in usability. I can’t read the articles anymore because the links included in them open if I tap my screen even slightly near them, it is constantly opening new tabs, ads, or sending me to other articles when I’m just trying to read the one I’m currently on. I haven’t been able to make it to the bottom of an article in weeks because I inevitably give up in frustration.

Normally links in an app require you to tap and let go and then they will open. If you tap and then hold your finger and move it down, most reading/news apps seem to realize that is the movement required to scroll and don’t open links. CNN doesn’t work this way anymore. Sometimes there are so many links there is nowhere for me to safely tap to scroll down. Since this is a recent change I’m assuming this is to increase ad revenue. I don’t mind ads but if I’m being forced away from what I’m reading I’ll get my news elsewhere.

On a separate note: I’ll also get notifications for articles, open them, and be taken to an article unrelated to the notification. A lot of times I can’t even find the article I wanted to read initially.

Bms270
, 10/18/2019

To the developers of the app

Please understand the difference between UIControlEventTouchDown and UIControlEventTouchUpInside. You need to stop using the former. It drives people crazy when they are scrolling while reading. UIControlEventTouchDown is triggering the navigation as soon as a finger is placed on a text/ad. This leads to unwanted navigation away from an article while scrolling. This is so ridiculous. Any junior dev should know this and avoid using it for links. I end up going to multiple places at least 10 times while reading one single news article. This has been happening in CNN app as long as I remember. If you are doing this intentionally to get more clicks, then shame on you on your bad practice. This is sacrificing user experience to mislead the advertisers.

2nd problem, the ad videos should only play once for a given reader. I end up having to watch the same ridiculous video ad 10 times a day for a month. Maybe you are not getting more diverse advertisers due to the bad practice mentioned above? Think about it.

I hope someone reads this. I really like to know your rationale on the first issue above that you persistently are doing and not changing it?